Forsaken
by Nome
Summary: In response to the WIKTT challenge "The Hollow Man". Hermione is compensated for her trials during the war. A special sort of servant, perfectly obedient. She chooses the one who never should have been there in the first place. Why was he forsaken?
1. 1

WIKTT challenge: The Hollow Man  
  
Forsaken  
  
Everyone's first impressions of the Wizengamot's holding cells were always the same. Cold wrapped itself around you, sliding through your clothing to slick smooth against your skin. The hall was long and unlit, leaving your eyes to follow the disappearing grey walls into oblivion and your terrified, half-crazed mind to wonder if, perhaps, the hall never ended. If perhaps the cells went on forever, and the echoes from the endless screaming rebounded into eternity.  
  
Although, only people who had been there before heard the screams that night, in their minds and in their memories. That night, everything was still, and silent.  
  
Hermione Granger followed the guard without even lighting her wand. If she'd lit it, someone might have seen the tears dripping over her nose as her own painful memories swarmed around her. With each holding cell they passed, she stomped carefully on another raw thought.  
  
When the guard stopped and turned to face her, she finally muttered the spell. The tip of her wand flared into life to show her eyes, calm and dry. The guard, now visible as a blonde woman with a blank, indifferent expression, explained, "You'll have to be specific in your instructions. Umbra follow commands to the letter without a much sense for its spirit."  
  
Hermione kept her eye contact even. "You keep them in cells when there is no possibility of a threat?"  
  
"Procedure, Miss Granger. Until released to their owners, they are prisoners whether the procedure has been preformed or not. To Umbra, there is no difference between a stone floor and a down mattress. Collect your property and register with the agent at the front, please."  
  
Hermione stepped into the open cell and swung her wand about. With a soft word, the light increased, and she walked to the small bench to the right. Her new property watched the far wall without reaction.  
  
"Hello, Professor. Stand, and follow me. Stay slightly to my left rear." Hermione allowed the guard to lead her back out, blinking at the sudden light when the door to the stairs was opened. At the top of the short flight, another indifferent-seeming guard sat at a desk, holding a book and quill.  
  
"Hermione Granger, in possession of Severus Snape."  
  
The heavyset man frowned at her. "Use of prior names is discouraged, Miss Granger. An Umbra is not a person. His number, please."  
  
She glanced behind her, at the simple brown robe. Stitched across the left breast in orange was the three-digit numeral.  
  
"Umbra 001."  
  
***********************************  
  
There was an old, worn path, winding through dead trees and a forest of chin-high weeds. It had apparently once been a beautiful approach, full of flowers and neatly-kept bushes. Hermione's next thought on the subject forced her lips into a mocking smile: that it looked like the way to a witch's house. Reminded of her situation by the sound of footsteps just behind her, she felt quite a lot like an evil, twisted old hag, luring some innocent child into her lair. Her expression falling back into introspective grimness, Hermione heightened her pace, and soon reached the open lawn and the manor it preceded.  
  
When the war was ended and Voldemort gone, the Ministry hunted down every Death Eater it could, brutally handling even the newest and most misguided of the Dark Lord's servants. The entire world had screamed for their blood. With the faces of those dead and missing staring back at them from their closed eyelids, the Wizengamot, one by one, sentenced each dark wizard to lives of complete emptiness.  
  
During the war, someone had developed a new, terrifying process. A complex potion, that quickly, but very painfully, ripped away the drinker's magic. Within the next day, aspects of his emotions, opinions, and beliefs followed. First courage, then hope, then every other distinguishing characteristic of a human being. The last thing to be taken was always his despair, making the last few moments of humanity spent in agonizing screams and sobs.  
  
Lucius Malfoy was utterly destroyed that way. Avery, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle, Lestrange, Macnair… and Severus Snape.  
  
Albus Dumbledore was one of the missing faces for whom the world mourned. Snape had been the first trial, and the first sentence. Without the only man who could vouch for his movements for the Light side, Severus Snape ceased to exist.  
  
And Hermione Granger, a victim of the Death Eater's atrocities, had been given one of these emptied people, one of these 'Umbra'. A servant, as part of the compensation for her sacrifice.  
  
Many of the other victims had been students of Snape's. Not knowing the man for what he was, always thinking he was a traitor, they could have taken so many terrible paths of vengeance. The Ministry never would have protected the Umbra, who was no longer, in their eyes, human.  
  
So he'd come home with Hermione.  
  
Home in more ways than one, actually. The manor house Hermione was busily taking down the door-wards on was what used to be Snape family estate. It was the rest of her compensation, with the sole condition that she take a few orphaned muggle-borns in on the summer holidays. Having no home of her own, she'd accepted.  
  
She entered the house and slid her muddy boots off onto a mat next to the door and her cloak onto a nearby rack that reached for it, wrought iron uncurling to gracefully receive the light material. With only a slight hesitation, she turned to Snape.  
  
She was ready to deliver the instructions she'd been planning out ever since they'd left the ministry: a careful schedule of necessary activities she didn't know if he would perform without her command. She opened her mouth to begin.  
  
Snape watched her without a flicker of emotion. She'd never seen his eyes so indifferent to the world.  
  
Professor Snape taught her potions for seven years. In seven years, she'd never caught his eye without his lip curling, his eyes flashing, or his shoulders stiffening in irritation. Snape, although admittedly tactiturn, was an emotional man. Every moment of his life was lived with intensity. To see him stripped of it was like seeing a glove left carelessly, unmoving, on a dresser.  
  
***********************************  
  
Hermione was used to living a solitary life. She enjoyed the quiet of it, the simple pleasure in relaxing entirely from considering one's appearance. In the year since graduation, she had happily roamed Snape manor with only the very aged Crookshanks for companionship. When she had to leave each morning for work, it had always been with a slight tinge of regret.  
  
Work was now a pleasant retreat. When home, she shut herself away in the library, reading and researching with the focus of her NEWT-taking days. The halls were no longer empty.  
  
She had always been a sympathetic person, but there could be no sympathy for a being without feelings, and Professor Snape would have scorned her pity.  
  
She still thought of him that way. She'd replaced the ugly brown prison robe with black robes she remembered so well, always with the accompanying memory of dim fires and swirling fumes. The brown one was burned. Professor Snape deserved his dignity.  
  
But she could do nothing for him. 


	2. 2

Surrounded by stacks of books, it was nearly impossible for Hermione to hear anyone knock on her front door, even amplified by magic, but the knock on the library door she heard quite clearly.  
  
"Come in."  
  
Snape entered and stood just inside the door. "Minerva McGonagall is here."  
  
Hermione stood. "Thank you, Professor." He turned to leave, and Hermione saw McGonagall stand aside to let him pass, her expression polite, as though he'd never changed. When she stepped into the room, Hermione caught only a glimpse of sad sympathy before the animagus settled into a pleasant smile. Hermione returned it. "Hello, Professor McGonagall. It's been a while."  
  
McGonagall, at a gesture from Hermione, took a seat, crossing her feet and settling her robes into smooth folds. "So it has, Hermione. I'm afraid I don't keep in touch with my old students as well as I should, even my brightest ones." She threw a quick glance over Hermione's paper cave, although Hermione had no doubt the woman's piercing eyes had noticed everything from the moment she first stepped into the room. "It seems your natural habitat hasn't changed."  
  
"Did you ever think it would?"  
  
"For your last few years at Hogwarts, I'm glad it didn't." she replied with a gleam in her eye. "A few of the other teachers and I had a small wager on whether you would ever find a boy that interested you more than Madam Pince's private province. I made a fair amount of sickles that way."  
  
Hermione, although startled, laughed. "Glad to help. I'm afraid Harry and Ron never appreciated it. Although, I never thought you the type to gamble."  
  
"Yes, I know. Teachers are not allowed to be real people. Some of your contemporaries probably still think that we shrivel up if we're away from school for too long." McGonagall's lips thinned into a line, then relaxed as she smiled again. "But call me Minerva, please. With all your accomplishments, I'm rather surprised I'm not calling you Professor."  
  
Hermione shifted. "I don't think I have the proper temperament. I never managed to keep my friends focused on their studies; faced with an entire school, I might resort to terrifying them all to keep them in line."  
  
"Well, that's been an efficient system for some teachers in the past."  
  
There was an uncomfortable silence. Minerva actually shifted nervously in her seat as well, and Hermione began to wonder if perhaps the Professor's visit was not for the sole purpose of keeping in touch.  
  
After a minute, Minerva's eyes again swept over the mounds of text. "So what is this research you're so dedicated to for?"  
  
With relief, Hermione flipped through a few pages of the book in front of her. "It's on dementors. I've been assigned a project at work: to try to identify dementor-producing areas and adapt emotion-draining spells to dispel the condensed negativity."  
  
"Preventing any respawning, then?"  
  
She nodded. "The ministry would rather not have uncontrollable soul-suckers wandering around again.  
  
Looking down, Hermione missed the expression of Minerva's face, but the tone was unmistakably bitter. "Why take that risk, when they can do it themselves, with less mess and fuss, and create a willing slave at the same time?"  
  
Hermione's head snapped up, and she saw how tired Minerva looked. She hadn't seen it, at first glance, but although McGonagall still kept herself neatly together, it showed. Lines, around her eyes. The slow, heavy blink. Hands that shook slightly. With a rush of sympathy, Hermione opened her mouth for forestall Minerva's comments and offer some kind remark, but Minerva met her eyes and interrupted.  
  
The question was nothing Hermione had expected. "What is it like?"  
  
Her mouth snapped shut, then fell open again. "Pardon me?"  
  
"That despicable procedure. How different did it make him?" At the sight of Hermione's obvious bafflement, she sighed. "I was Severus' colleague for fifteen years. I knew him, I knew his character… but that blasted trial! I didn't make it clear enough, I didn't give present my testimony sincerely enough-"  
  
Hermione shook her head. "To use a muggle expression, Fudge was on a witch hunt, Minerva. He was trying to ingratiate himself to the public - no one but Dumbledore could have kept Professor Snape from… his sentence."  
  
Minerva looked down at her hands, then back up. For the first time ever, Hermione saw guilt and pain in her face. "I was deputy Headmistress. I was responsible for my fellow teachers. Severus should have been able to trust me." She cleared her throat and sat a little straighter, a little steadier. "I should know what happened."  
  
Hermione stared at her old head of house. The woman was Gryffindor at its finest, always. Where had Hermione's own Gryffindor courage gone? She'd buried herself in this library, taken any excuse to avoid the consequence of her choice. What dignity did she afford Snape when she couldn't even stand to be near him?  
  
She tried her best to answer evenly. "The potion drained all emotions and magic. Professor Snape… is missing. His opinions, ideals, and mannerisms, everything rooted in emotions, and, by association, personality, is gone."  
  
Both women retreated into their own thoughts. After a few minutes, Minerva replied softly, "Thank you for choosing him. I'd hate to think of him in the care of someone who doesn't know." She stood and left.  
  
Hermione folded her arms over the table and leaned forward to rest her chin on them. She stared blankly at the text she'd left open.  
  
Gryffindor Courage.  
  
She, too, exited, and began to the wander the halls.  
  
He was in a small study, ensconced in a huge green chair and staring into the fire. She took the other seat, and studied him. He looked up.  
  
His eyes had always shone in firelight, before. No matter how black his glare, the many perpetual fires of the Potions classroom had sent glittering sparks dancing in it.  
  
Now they were hollow. Not condescending, not derisive, not angry. Not even pleasant or polite. Just empty. At an angle where anyone's eyes should have caught the light of the flames, Snape's eyes were dull.  
  
Hermione shared stares with the shell of her former Potions Master. He would do anything she said, without comment, complaint, or question, down to killing himself.  
  
Her thoughts spilled out over her tongue in a fervent whisper. "You were such a proud man. You might have told me that ordering you to kill yourself would be better than this." She shook her head. "No one should be a slave. But, like this, you're a willing slave. Is it worse to be enslaved by another, or by yourself?"  
  
He didn't reply. They held gazes for another minute, than he returned to staring at the fire.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
A few notes to reviewers who had concerns:  
  
JennyRad: Definitely not a one shot. the WIKTT yahoo group has the details of the challenge, if you'd like a bit of a cookie on plot pieces to expect.  
  
JestersTear: I'm afraid I'll never do it justice -- I rather wish I could see you answer it.  
  
justanothercrazyfangirl: I recommend checking into the WIKTT group. There's more to this challenge than may appear at first glance. ;)  
  
A tremendous thank you to everyone else who reads this story, especially those who have bothered to review. I enjoy every single one of them. 


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